Chuggnutt!

Month: May 2003

  • Some Items.

    Item 1. My in-laws are in town, from today until Sunday. This always causes some tension around here, as my wife doesn’t get along very well with her parents, but the kids just love them, so all’s well. Plus, they’ll watch the kids one night so we can finally go see The Matrix Reloaded.

    Item 2. The free ebooks section of my site here is definitely generating traffic; I get more hits from search engines (mostly Google and MSN) to this page than anywhere else on the site. I’ve also noticed some hits coming in from Google to the page with my PHP porter stemming algorithm.

    Item 3. Never, ever watch the movie SwimFan.

    Item 4. I’m writing up a long, geeky rant on comic books to post here sometime soon. If you’re into comics, keep an eye out. If not, no worries.

    Item 5. I actually can’t think of an “Item 5,” so that’s all, folks.

  • X2

    I saw X2 (X-Men 2, for the uninitiated) Saturday, and I’ll say right off, I enjoyed it quite a bit. It was better than the original, which is a bold thing to say for a sequel, but it’s true. And I quite liked the first movie.

    About the only thing I didn’t like about it was the title; the subtitle to X2 was X-Men United, which didn’t really make any sense and certainly didn’t add anything to the movie; sort of like Star Wars Episode II‘s subtitle. At any rate, they could have just called the movie X2 and left it at that; it has a nicer ring to it, I think.

    Things I liked:

    • The overall plot and script was better than the last movie, too, much more coherent and sensible (well, as sensible as fantasy can be).
    • The special effects are spot on. I think we’re finally at the time where there’s pretty much nothing that can’t be done or depicted on the screen.
    • Consistent use of actors and characters. Nothing bothers me more than when a character in one movie was played by a certain actor, only to then pop up in another movie being played by a different actor. Not a problem here. Minor roles from the first movie are played by the same actors here.
    • Halle Berry does a much better job of portraying Storm this time. Her wig looks real, too.
    • Magneto is dangerous and more ruthless this time around, which is appropriate, but they haven’t elevated him to ridiculous power levels or made him a savage lunatic like they tend to do in the comics.
    • Wolverine kicks SO much ass. The way Wolverine should be done.
    • The School for mutants is actually a school (like in the first movie), not just a mutant paramilitary training ground, as it was almost always portrayed in the comics prior to the first movie.

    Overall, great movie. Go see it.

  • Lunar eclipse

    In case you live in a cave somewhere and don’t look up into the night sky, there was a total lunar eclipse tonight. Unfortunately, here on the west coast we missed most of the show; by the time the moon rose over the cloudy horizon, it was just past totality and starting to emerge from the Earth’s shadow.

    Still totally cool.

    Took some pictures with our digital camera, on the night mode setting. This is about the best one, I think:

    Lunar eclipse
    click to view larger image

    Pretty neat, eh?

  • Dog Days

    So last night, the dog eats a bag of Hershey’s Kisses.

    Okay, so not a whole bag, but about 10 ounces out of a 12 ounce bag. And they were the new Kisses, tasty ones with toffee and almonds.

    Anyway, I go downstairs about 10 o’clock, and find the shredded bag on the floor, sans Kisses. Uh oh, I think. This can’t be good.

    Every one was gone. As was most of the foil.

    Gone.

    And you know what happens when dogs eat chocolate, right? Right?

    (Here’s a hint: they die.)

    So my wife calls a 24-hour vet, and they tell us that if a dog eats an ounce of chocolate for each pound of body weight, then they’re in danger, otherwise, they’ll just (probably) end up with some gastrointestinal problems. Since the dog is about 50 pounds, and he only ate 10 ounces of chocolate, there’s nothing to worry about.

    Hell with that. I’m worried about all the damn foil he ate.

  • Mental cases

    Only in Oregon, I suppose. Apparently, Multnomah County needs a Klingon interpreter for mental health patients. The CNN story is here.

    I don’t think any more needs to be said.